Why Lady Gaga's Sirloin Bikini Is Not a Feminist Fashion Statement

I adore Lady Gaga. I think she's subversive, nuanced, and strange, and fabulously queer in all sorts of ways. But let's make no mistake: there is nothing subversive, nuanced, or even interesting about her decision to wear a raw meat bikini on the cover of this month's Vogue Hommes Japan.

Why? There are a number of reasons. Let's start with the most obvious: women are often seen and referred to in the same disembodied ways we refer cuts of meat. Thigh, breast, leg, rump roast ... you get the picture. Do we really need to be encouraging this type of demeaning language about fragmented bodies through visual metaphor? We are all more than the sum of our parts.

Meat used to be a luxury item, a status symbol due to its high cost, and for many, it still is. (To know how much meat was wasted for this photo shoot alone is distressing; to know that animals needlessly died so that a pop star could wear them for ten minutes is heartbreaking.) But in much of the Western world, meat is also now directly tied to environmental concerns, to factory farming and animal cruelty, and as seen on this Vogue cover, gender and sexuality. Raw meat = raw animal magnetism? Slabs of beef = sexual metaphor? Meat = power and money? It isn't so simple anymore to just toss around a hunk of animal flesh and hope it doesn't draw too many connotations. It does.

Let's also take a moment to remember that it was only last year that Gaga was part of PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" Campaign. PETA is predictably annoyed at her sudden change of (public) heart, though to be fair, naked women opposing fur is not exactly revolutionary ecofeminist advocacy (and like the meat bikini, it's also not terribly inventive or compelling). Some folks also say the meat costumes are so 2008 America's Next Top Model. We're worried about being redundant instead of all the other reasons why this is gross? Am I the only one who thought once was far too many times for this kind of stunt in the first place?

I clearly want too much. I want someone who wields a cultural power, who represents a zetigeist, to do something even more radical ... like swear off red meat or hell, go vegan. Why can't Gaga make a statement about the ethics of factory farms or the disconnect between women who love their own children, but don't care that veal cows are someone's slaughtered babies? That cows are raped so we can drink milk? How about one of the most basic arguments, that masculinity and meat eating are deeply intertwined and produce a cultural norm based on domination, aggression, and a striking lack of compassion for all life?

No doubt, Gaga was just after some cheap press. She is, after all, devoted to transgression, to pushing the boundaries, the avant garde, and anything else you might want call this. But don't call it original, and please don't think it makes a feminist statement. Of all the evocative things she's done in her short career, this weird, offensive, masculinist display doesn't even make the list.

Photo Credit: Domain Barnyard